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“Yeah, I mean, why not? I’m not finding anyone here,” I said, putting some pasta salad on my plate. Natalie had brought over leftovers from her parents.
“Right,” she said, her lips pressing together.
“Is it not good?” My worst fear was to come off like a complete dork.
“No, it’s good. It’s great.” Natalie handed the phone back to me. I handed her a plate.
“No, thanks, I’m good,” she said.
“Are you okay? Is this dating stuff too much?” I wanted to be sensitive to the fact that she’d just had a breakup.
“What? No. I mean, no,” she said. We sat on the couch together, but I could feel distance between us.
“Was it really bad?” I asked.
Natalie took a deep breath. “No, it was…it was after that was awful. I don’t even remember what we said during our fight. That part is a complete blur,” she said.
“I’m sorry, you don’t have to talk about it,” I said.
“No, it’s okay. I haven’t really talked about it with anyone. It’s easier to try and pretended that it’s not there. Easier to forget about it now that I’m back. I don’t have memories of the two of us being together here.”
That made sense.
“Did you love her?” I asked.
Natalie smiled in such a sad way, it broke my heart.
“Yeah. Yeah, I did.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Me too. But I can’t dwell on it.”
“Right,” I said. “At least you didn’t get her car impounded.”
“Wait, what?” Natalie said.
“Yeah, not my best moment,” I said.
I hadn’t talked about my ex before with Natalie in any great detail.
She’d been here for the summer with her family and it was meant to just be a fling, but then I fell in love like a dumbass and then found out that she’d cheated on me with one of Wyatt’s friends. The car-impounding came after that.
“Wow, I’m so sorry. What a bitch,” Natalie said.
“So really, you could have a worse breakup story,” I said. “Somehow I managed to not get into trouble for the car thing. Still not really sure how that happened.”
A miracle, truly.
“James cheated on me,” Natalie said in a soft voice. James was the guy she dated for most of high school that we thought she was going to marry.
“For real? What a scumbag,” I said.
“Yup. He had this whole thing going with this girl from another school that he’d met at one of his games. She knew about me, I guess, but he kept telling her that he was going to break up with me. I can’t even look at my prom pictures anymore,” she said.
I’d gone alone to prom. My parents had taken pictures, but I was the only one in them. I didn’t like to think about it.
“You looked pretty happy that night,” I said. Of course I’d seen her at prom. Our school hadn’t been that big.
